Half the Web's traffic comes from bots

[longknife]

I've heard of paid humans who cruise the net but this is the first I've read about machines doing it. It does make a lot of sense. They can do it faster and longer.



The story is @ Half the Web's traffic comes from bots, and that's costing you more than you think

 

[Bleipriester]

Just look how many bots are currently on the board.

 

[Ringel05]

 

[Iceweasel]

The googlebots are probably the biggest. They sniff out changes in sites for hit rankings. That's why there's so much bullshit on the internet. Site activity increases the likelyhood of higher rankings. That's why I usually avoid the first page in searches.

 

[HaShev]

And because of this we are forced to be tortured with those impossible to decipher
CAPTCHAs ("Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart") wasting more web traffic, time, patience, & our sanity. The TV sitcom
"The Middle" did a shtick on the frustration and hinderance of CAPTCHAs.

 

[Dekster]

Yeah this is why you hear about some guy who owns a small hardware store in some small town who agrees to pay for some per view web advertising even though they know nothing of the internet and end up getting a $250K bill from facebook or google or whomever.

I am keeping an eye out on some of these next generation web developers. They have some interesting ideas which really harkens back to earlier web days by building a more gated web that blocks out the constant advertising/clickbait/paid promotional/spam/popup/ransomeware stuff.